Busting the Tip and Gipper Myth

CALLER: Thank you for being our voice, first of all. The reason I'm calling is that I'm really, really upset and ticked off and angry and I'm hoping you can calm me down a little bit. But did you know that Chris Matthews is having a book signing and lecture event at the Reagan library on a book that he's writing about President Reagan?

RUSH: No. I didn't know that.

CALLER: Yes, and I'd like to give you my analogy of that, if I may.

RUSH: Feel free. Go right ahead.

CALLER: Okay. To me it's like Satan writing a book about the pope and having a signing at the Vatican. I just can't even imagine the Reagan library doing this and it's very upsetting. I've gone to many book signings there and this is just outrageous. What do you think?

RUSH: I like your analogy. Satan. "Satan writing a book about the pope and having a signing at the Vatican."

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: I did not know this. I imagine... There's a myth out there, and that is that Reagan and Tip O'Neill were good buddies 'cause they had their Irish heritage in common -- and they mighta gone at each other all day, every day, but then at the end of the day they'd sit down for a beer. I can tell you, that didn't happen. Tip O'Neill didn't go to the residence quarters for beer, and Reagan didn't cross the street to the Old Ebbitt Grill and meet Tip O'Neill there for a beer or a Jamison after work.

That's just liberal mythology, and it's recent. It's a distortion. I'll bet you Matthews builds on it, or relies on it. It's part of a distortion to show, "Even back in those days, there was bipartisanship, and people worked together, even with Reagan and O'Neill," as a means of attacking Republicans today as being uncooperative, strictly partisan. All I can tell you is that it's a myth, that Tip O'Neill and Reagan were good buddies and they put aside all their differences at the end of the day. Tip O'Neill, at the end of the day, had just as much rotten stuff to say about Reagan as he did during the day.

CALLER: I remember that.

RUSH: And, now, as to why the Reagan "liberry" is opening up? I don't know. I hadn't heard. So I am kind of reluctant to comment on it. I would just assume it's got to do with that chapter that they mythologize now.

CALLER: Well, it's not the first time he's been there, but when I heard it was a book about our dear President Reagan, that's when I lost it.

RUSH: This thing is a flawed premise, and Matthews has written a book about a flawed premise, and the purpose of this is obviously make Matthews some money. But it's also to try to create the notion that the Republicans today... I'll bet in this book it says, "Right-wingers love Reagan, and they talk about Reagan, but the couldn't hold Reagan's whatever! Because Reagan met with the opposition! Reagan liked the Democrats. These guys today..." I can just see this now. That's why. The Gipper's part of the book, so that's why they're doing it out there.

I'm sorry. I didn't even know the book was out. Sorry. I know now.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This kind of burns me up, folks. Ronald Reagan, as you well know, won an historic landslides, 45- and 49-state landslides. The Democrat Party obstructed or tried to obstruct Reagan nonstop, which is their job. Don't misunderstand. The idea that there was some kind of cooperation, comity, getting along, is BS. There wasn't. Tip O'Neill insulted Ronald Reagan frequently, in public. He called him "an amiable dunce."

I have some quotes here. "O'Neill said," of Reagan, "'He has no concern, no regard, no care for the little man of America, and I understand that: Because of his lifestyle, he never meets those people.' Reagan, according to O'Neill, was 'callous,' 'a real Ebenezer Scrooge,' 'a cheerleader for selfishness.' His administration had 'made a target of the politically weak, the poor, the working people.' His policies were just 'one big Christmas party for the rich.'" That's Tip O'Neill.

Tip and the Gipper.

Here's another, from 1984: "The evil is in the White House at the present time. And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America, and who likes to ride a horse. He’s cold. He’s mean. He’s got ice water for blood." Oh, yeah! Tip and the Gipper. That's Tip O'Neill talking about Reagan in 1984. He said of Reagan,

"He only works three to three-and-a-half hours a day. He doesn't do his homework. He doesn't read his briefing papers. It's sinful that this man is president of the United States. He lacks the knowledge that he should have, on every sphere, whether it's the domestic or whether it's the international sphere." In his own memoir, O'Neill wrote, "I’ve known every president since Harry Truman, and there’s no question in my mind that Reagan was the worst."

So now Matthews is writing a book Tipper and the Gipper, or Tip and the Gipper, about how that was "when politics worked." I'm telling you, folks, all this is -- whether Matthews even knows it or not -- is an effort to impact Republicans today. It's an attack on Republicans. It establishes this myth that Reagan and Tip mighta disagreed on things, but they were best buds, drank beer all the time! What a yuk yuk, as opposed to these mean-spirited Republicans today, racist bigots who won't cooperate with Democrats or Obama because he's black.